War Crimes and the Vietnamese People: American Representations and Silences

“War crimes” were in the logic of the Vietnam War. As the U.S. military sought to extirpate guerrillas living in the midst of the rural population, Vietnamese peasants paid a high price. With memories of World War II still fresh, the Tokyo and Nuremberg Trials provided the antiwar movement a framework for making sense of the carnage. Veterans led the way in documenting the case, most notably at the Citizens Commission of Inquiry (December 1970, Washington D.C.) and the “winter soldier” investigation (January 1971, Detroit), during which returning soldiers described atrocities they had witnessed and perpetrated in Southeast Asia.